Mastercard South Africa bags prestigious award as South Africa’s Most Innovative Payment Solutions Provider 2021

Mastercard, a global technology company, has been named South Africa’s Most Innovative Payment Solutions Provider in 2021 by International Business Magazine. The award was given in recognition of Mastercard’s continuous innovation of payment technologies and its ability to reimagine the consumer payment experience in South Africa.

The International Business Magazine Awards honour top companies across Africa based on their performance, extraordinary leadership and supreme quality in services provided. Based on an intensive process, expert panellists scrutinise and carefully select the winners from the nomination list according to the set criteria.

As part of its goal to positively impact the lives of millions of people and enabling communities to move towards more advanced, digital economies, Mastercard has developed and launched several technology innovations in partnership with its customers in South Africa over the past year.

To drive adoption of contactless payments, Mastercard partnered with payment facilitator Hellopay to roll out SoftPOS, which leverages Mastercard Tap on Phone technology, enabling small informal enterprises to accept contactless payments using any NFC-enabled Android phone. Mastercard also partnered with Spot Money to launch the country’s first Open Banking offering. Supported by Mastercard’s technology, the app enables users to pay using various payments methods including Scan to Pay (a QR code-based service), a virtual and physical Spot Money Mastercard or contactless mobile phone payments.

Recently, Mastercard collaborated with Ukheshe to launch Nedbank’s new payment platform – Money Message – that enables small and micro enterprises to conveniently receive secure in-chat payments from their customers via WhatsApp. A first in South Africa, the solution also enables merchants to send an invoice requesting a payment from any customer seamlessly through WhatsApp. Mastercard is also supporting the humanitarian efforts of philanthropic organisations including the Gift of the Givers Foundation and FoodForward SA through Cause Marketing initiatives designed to drive the adoption of digital payments.

Speaking on the win, Mark Elliott, Division President for Mastercard, Southern Africa said: “This award is a testament to the confidence our partners continue to put in our brand, products, and solutions. For more than 30 years, we’ve been using our technology and expertise to make payments safer, simpler and seamless in South Africa. We leverage technology to deliver solutions that solve real pain points and strategically partner with a wide variety of stakeholders to make the digital economy work for everyone, everywhere.”

Trishna Das, the Chief Editor of International Business Magazine commented: “Mastercard South Africa is an intuitive payments technology provider, embracing opportunities to support and collaborate with digital players to unlock new potential and build the next generation of commerce. The company is recognized for maintaining a client-centric approach and remains an active advocate for transparency and fair practices, while also focusing on respect, trust, and transparency.”

Mastercard has a long-standing history of leveraging its technology, data and know-how to develop innovative solutions that has helped to drive financial inclusion, empower businesses, and innovate the payments experience.

Bridging the digital divide through innovation is essential to enabling financial inclusion. For all countries and communities to benefit from future growth and opportunity, Mastercard aims to ensure that everyone is included through easier access to digital financial products and services. The company works tirelessly in advancing financial inclusion initiatives as it strives to deliver on its global goal of connecting 1 billion people and 50 million small and micro-enterprises to the digital economy by 2025.